It is inevitable to drag the tastes or influences that have impacted you the most in the formative years, those where the brain is more receptive and releasing more hormones that later emerge with the memory or recovery of those tastes and influences. Not even artists escape trying continuously pursue that cinematographic holy grail that marked them of young people
And these influences are sometimes all we need to fully locate the artistic sensibility of a certain author and allow us to fully locate his work. It may be the same case of Zack Snyder, a director who gets both too little and too much credit as a visionary thanks to a huge series of fans and detractors who, for the most part, do not quite grasp what he is looking to do.
But everything is as simple as seeing a film not directed by him, but it is key to everything he does: ‘Excalibur’.
Warning: in the text there will be spoilers for the story of King Arthur that is told in the film and for almost all of Zack Snyder’s works
The revised myth (with violence and operas)
Between discussions about obsession with vignettes, objectivism and messianic conceptions around the heroes that he captures on screen, the Arthurian myths are really the recurring concepts in a filmography as powerful as it is peculiar. And, specifically, the performance by John Boorman in 1981 in this cult classic contains the essence that Snyder has tried to capture throughoutas he himself acknowledges in an episode of the podcast “Movies That Changed My Life” commenting on the film.
Boorman introduces us to ‘Excalibur’ by well-known myth of King Arthur, covering from his agreed conception with the magician Merlin to his incredible adventures in pursuit of saving his kingdom. The sword that gives the show its title also plays an important role, possessing magical powers and embedded in stone, awaiting the arrival of the legitimate king to be lifted and wielded.
We know the myth, but the way Boorman chooses to tell it is the difference that makes a young Snyder. Seeing his ambitious vision embodied in him has a lot of hallucinogenic experience for its incredible images, as pictorial as they are ultraviolent and explicit, their charged atmosphere close to operetta, their way of moving through history in fits and starts. Qualities that make her turbulent… And also pure Zack Snyder, since his style completes all those marks.
But it is not just stylistic, although it is clearly important for a visual architect like him who admires his way of “combining drama with being a visualist”. Almost all histories of him contain exceptional heroes willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to secure the release of others
In this aspect, they stand out from the Spartans of ‘300’ to the way to approach Superman in his DC trilogy, also passing through the protagonist of ‘Sucker Punch’. It can even be said that the heroes of ‘Watchmen’ do the same, allowing Ozymandias’s final megalomaniacal plan to come to pass.
From ‘Excalibur’ to Superman
A recurring theme that can well be attributed to the messianic figure of Jesus Christ (there are not a few Christian images in his DC movies), but it undoubtedly responds to the final destiny of Arthur in ‘Excalibur’. His death scene in the movie is openly honored at the end from ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’, with Superman trying to give the final blow to the villain while being pierced by one of his spikes just as Arthur has spears in his chest as he last hits him.
Boorman’s image creation undoubtedly has hallmarks that Snyder has assimilated when creating his own epic. The way he uses a cantata like Carl Orff’s “O Fortuna” to create epic moments is followed by him in expansive moments in slow-motion guided by loaded operettas.
The use of extreme violence or sex, as shocking as exaggerated to the extreme, they have also become marks of snyderism that lead to delirious moments like orchestrating a sex scene with Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ in ‘Watchmen’. His adventures in terror, such as ‘Dawn of the Dead’ or ‘Army of the Dead’, took advantage of that open door to ultra-violence and blood that gives the most adult rating.
The extremist vision embodied in “Excalibur” is the kind of revisionism of medieval mythos that has driven Snyder’s interpretation of superheroes, especially those in the DC Universe. And it is also a vision that caused quite a bit of bewilderment at the timesimilar to what Zack’s movies cause today.
Look if not how Roger Ebert at the time said that ‘Excalibur’ is “a record of the comings and goings of arbitrary, inconsistent and shadowy figures, who are not heroes but simply runaway giants. Even so, it is wonderful to behold“. Tell me that is not applicable to the conversation that Snyder movies give.
They like more or less, without a doubt they are distinguishable artistic expressions that cause reaction, and therefore commendable. Now it only remains to see how Zack applies the film to a western as he once intended.